Washougal city councilors established a transportation benefit district in 2015, and at Monday’s city council meeting, councilors approved a $20 vehicle license fee through the district.
The fee will become part of the annual charges paid to the state when registering vehicles, and will go into effect in six months. Washougal joins Vancouver and Battle Ground in running a $20 license fee through a transportation benefit district.
Woodland city councilors have tried twice to get voters to pass a 0.2 percent sales tax increase as part of the city’s transportation benefit district, but the vote has failed both times.
A transportation benefit district can charge an extra vehicle registration fee or sales tax to fund local transportation projects, per the Revised Code of Washington. The money raised through a transportation benefit district can’t be diverted; it must go to transportation improvements.
The Washougal City Council voted 6-1 in favor of the ordinance with Councilor Brent Boger as the lone vote against. He said he wasn’t against the fee itself, but opposed a second part of the ordinance that eliminates language stating that vehicle license fee funds can’t supplant funds currently expended by the city.
City Administrator David Scott said the city has used general fund expenditures for the city’s pavement management program. By eliminating the language on supplemental funds, the city can use that general fund money for other items in the budget. The city council will most likely use that money to enhance the city’s code enforcement program.
Boger said he couldn’t support the ordinance with the deletion of the supplanting language, as he felt like the city would be diverting part of these funds to pay for things that aren’t transportation-related.
Councilor Paul Greenlee said the biggest piece of funding for the pavement management program comes from the real estate excise tax, which has fluctuated from less than $200,000 a year to more than $600,000 at different times throughout the last decade.
“That revenue depends entirely on how much real estate is sold in that fiscal year,” he said. “That varies a lot. If the real estate excise tax goes down, you can’t supplant that loss with money from the tab fee. What the tab fee does is it provides a stable funding source for pavement maintenance.”
Councilor Ray Kutch said he was conflicted about the fee, but ultimately voted in favor.
“Road maintenance and police and fire are the three more important things we have to do in this community,” he said. “As much as it bothers me to vote for a $20 tab fee, I have to support that because of that justification of road maintenance.”
Councilor Michelle Wagner voted in favor because of the stability the fee provides.
“The one benefit of the vehicle license fee is that it’s always going to have this amount of money for pavement management, so it won’t be at the digression of who you have on the council as to how much money you’re going to put into it, whether you’re going to shoot for fair roads, good roads, excellent roads,” she said. “It will be a consistent amount of funding we’ll always have for roads not at the capriciousness of the council and what our general fund is looking at at any particular time.”
Form of government update
Voters in Washougal came out in favor of changing the city’s form of government to a council-manager setup instead of the previous mayor-council arrangement. The council-manager form shares power among a seven-member council, all elected by residents. The council is responsible for making policy and adopting the budget, and would appoint a city manager to handle daily operations of city government, personnel functions and preparation of the budget for submission to the council for its review and approval. The city manager is directly accountable to and can be removed by a majority vote of the council at any time.
While the actual change won’t happen until election results are certified later this month, city councilors have started passing ordinances to make the transition. At Monday’s meeting, the councilors voted to get rid of the city administrator position and create a city manager position. In executive session, they voted to keep Scott on as city manager when the change becomes official. Scott has served as city administrator since 2010.
The new form of government also means current Mayor Molly Coston, who was elected in November 2017 and took office in January, would become the eighth city councilor and serve on the council until her current term is up at the end of 2021. City councilors will appoint a mayor at their Dec. 3 meeting. Coston could have resigned her seat, but said she plans on staying on the council through her term.
Coston is also hopeful the city councilors will appoint her mayor.
“I’d be very excited about that,” she said. “I’ll still be doing the things I love the most: being the public face of Washougal, chairing meetings and it takes some of that managerial chore away.”
